In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumred III’.
During a typical blooming season I isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific plum-apricot hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2001 one such house containing ‘Purple Majesty’ plum (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 7,503) was crossed by me in this manner. To pollinate this plum, I selected bouquets from several sources of apricot and interspecific plum-apricot hybrid trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this plum tree was harvested and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “H1 15P”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the spring of 2004 the claimed variety was selected by me as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of interspecific tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘Purple Majesty’ plum by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is dark red to purple in skin color, firm in texture, oblate in shape, and matures just past mid June, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is sweeter in flavor, much larger in size, semi-freestone instead of clingstone, and dark red in flesh color instead of orange yellow.
The present variety is similar to ‘Yummybeaut’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 13,478) plum by being self-unfruitful and by producing fruit that is dark red to purple in skin color, firm in texture, and matures in the second half of June, but is distinguished therefrom by having a more prolific bloom, by producing more pollen, and by producing fruit that is sweeter in flavor, much larger in size, semi-freestone instead of clingstone, oblate instead of globose in shape, and dark red in flesh color instead of yellow.